Labyrinths: Emma Jung, Her Marriage to Carl, and the Early Years of Psychoanalysis

This book takes as its starting point the observation that although Carl Jung’s ideas did much to shape our understanding of all that is interpersonal, his own most significant relationship has remained largely unexamined. Clay (King, Kaiser, Tsar), a BBC director and producer, suggests that Jung’s wife, Emma, was the driving force behind her husband’s renowned insights. Clay’s narrative displays expert scholarship in drawing on a variety of archival sources, some never used before in a published study. However, her writing is most infused with the spirit of a storyteller, weaving a tale of love, despair, and the psyche in which, predictably, Sigmund Freud makes regular appearances. Such prioritization of story over the intricacies of each source might leave historically inclined readers unsatisfied. And inevitably, this kind of biography will, in spite of its insistent focus on a wife, at times veer more towards the famous husband. Indeed, the survival of Jung’s diary allows his own voice to be directly present while Emma’s is drawn from hearsay. But with its imagery and dramatic tenor, this is a tale within which Jung himself would find many psychoanalytic riches, even as it places some of his greatest innovations at the feet of a fascinating woman. (Nov.)